Friendship

This is a lovely piece of quality literature. It is a card that is presented when you have a friendship bracelet made as a gift by Links of London. This is an example of a highly finished and well produced "card" which many people would consider as entirely superfluous - but this small piece of print re-inforces everything that the brand stands for - down to the smallest detail.

Size is 175mmx95mm. It is a 4pp card with a die cut tab inside for holding a receipt and copy of order form...and the teeny (60x40mm) gift card is for writing a schmaltzy message. Printed in CMYK and hot foil blocked in silver foil. It is printed on Omnia 280gsm, so the colour is vibrant and the foil "sinks" nicely into the sheet. 

Design is by Chris Bedson.

Litho printing and lovely quality hot foiling is by Generation Press.

http://www.linksoflondon.com/

http://www.generationpress.co.uk/

Posted by Justin Hobson 05.07.2010

Jobs from the past - Number 10

Regular followers will know that my first post of every month is a "job from the past" so that I can show some of the really good work from years gone by and here's one from five years ago.

Creativity Revealed 2005-2006

This is a very simple yet effective piece of work produced for Unilever, sponsors of the Rachel Whiteread installation in the Turbine hall "EMBANKMENT"

These pieces were for the invitation (which I haven't got anymore!) and the welcome booklets, menus and place name cards for the sponsors dinner and evening.

The Menu is 100mm square and the welcome booklet 105x80mm. The unusual thing is that the covers are produced using a corrugated kraft e-flute material and the idea was to laser cut the material to give the job an architectural/constructed feel. I spoke with the lasercutters and they had never used a corrugated board before and doubted that it would work but they were more than prepared to give it a go! I sent samples and as you can see it worked exceptionally well.

The booklets only had a 4pp text which produced on our translucent material, Virtual Candy, white in 110gsm. Because of the "crushability" of corrugated we decided to bind using three hole sewing with a magenta thread which matched the print on the inside.

Production design was by Steve Baynes at 3 Sixteen. Lasercutting was by Trilogy Lasercraft in Huntingdon.

http://www.threesixteen.eu.com/

http://www.lasercraft.co.uk/

Posted by Justin Hobson 01.07.2010

Renaissance of Flock!

These are some lovely invitations for the sponors reception at the British Museum for their current exhibition of Italian Renaissance Drawings.

The cropped image on the front of the invitations have been printed on Flockage Litho. For those of you which are not familiar with this product, it is a flocked paper and board which feels like a velvety material to the touch but which remarkably you can actually litho print onto!

and below are the reverse of the invites...

To give these invitations extra weight (and gravitas), they have been duplexed with another board so they actually feel around 600gsm. There are three sizes: 95x210mm, 148x148mm and 148x210mm.

Design is by Constanza Gaggero. Original drawing by Andrea del Verrocchio. Print is by Push.

...and time to hurry along to see the exhibition, it finishes on 25th July. It was well reviewed by The Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2010/apr/04/italian-renaissance-drawings-british-museum

http://www.britishmuseum.org/

http://www.push-print.com/

Posted by Justin Hobson 29.06.2010

The Concise Dictionary of Dress

This is a great piece of promotional literature for arts organisation Artangel. The Concise Dictionary of Dress is a project produced by Artangel in collaboration with the V&A, hosted at Blythe House. If you  hurry you can still catch it - it finishes on 27th June.

This job is 488mmx340mm folding to 122x170mm using a concertina map fold. It is printed on our Clervaux [1sided] 110gsm which is and uncoated paper with a smooth side and a rough side. On this project the smooth sided is printed with just black type and the "rougher" more tactile side is printed in CMYK with some really interesting images both contemporary and from the archive.

Design is by Frith Kerr at Studio Frith. Print is by Xtraprint in London.

What more can I say ...it's just really lovely! 

and thanks to Frith for the beautifully written note:

http://www.artangel.org.uk/

http://www.studiofrith.com/

http://www.xtraprint.co.uk/

Posted by Justin Hobson 25.06.2010

Wrangler F/W10

This is the Fall/Winter 2010 look book for Wrangler - Kustom Kulture 

This is the latest collection from "the original American outdoor denim brand" - Wrangler and as I'm sure you can see from the images, it is a beautiful piece of literature. Art direction, photography and reproduction is superb.

It's a 24pp self cover, saddle stitched (plus a loose inserted A2 poster). Size is A3 portrait and it's printed on Marazion Ultra 150gsm which gives it that dead matt/flat look but with great reproduction. 

Art Direction, design and production is by Studio Thomson. It just has a fantastic feel - it is difficult for me to say too much more about it - look at the images below, they speak for the job...

The art direction is by Mark and Chris Thomson and the quality of the direction and photography (by Scott Trindle) is matched by the exceptional printing (four colour black and whites are v.good) by Push.

http://www.wrangler-europe.com/
http://www.studiothomson.com/
http://www.push-print.com/

Posted by Justin Hobson 23.06.2010

Invitation to Shop...

Here's a job that's hot off the press. It's the invitation to the launch of SHOP magazine's spring/summer shopping guides. The size is 600x396mm folding to 132x150mm and it's printed on our lovely Offenbach Bible 60gsm. The fantastic illustrations are by Emily Forgot (http://www.emilyforgot.co.uk/)

Design is by Studio8. Steve Fenn is the designer, Creative Director is Zoë Bather.

Print production is by Granite Colour.

www.global-blue.com/en/london
http://www.emilyforgot.co.uk/
http://www.studio8design.co.uk/
http://www.granitecolour.com/

Posted by Justin 22.06.2010

Central St Martins - MA Communication Design

Last week I went to the Central St Martins show for MA Communication Design at the Rochelle School in London E2 for the private view.

It was a beautiful evening and the bar was outside in the sunshine!

The show was well attended and well layed out both on the ground and first floors.

There was a lot of great work on show but there are two students in particular who produced great pieces of work (...on paper, obviously!) which I will try and show here:

Firstly, Hila Ben-Navat (hilulimb@gmail.com) who has produced "The Genocide Project" which comprise  several pieces of exceptionally well produced literature plus a series of posters. The disturbing work covers the subject of genocide from the Holocaust up to "ethnic cleansing" of the present day and is a very powerful piece of work. What this project in particular shows is the way she has considered the relationship between the subject, design, imagery and the physical material substrate, printing and binding.

The second student is Kristina Kostadinova (kristina.kostadinova@gmail.com) who produced a fantastic project showing the most amazing photography (she did all the photography) of dozens and dozens of Soviet built edifices in her native Bulgaria.  The project not only documents the current state of their decay, but illustrates their history and makes a social commentary about the current lack of any kind of national pride in these once great monoliths.  

It goes without saying that my pics here do very little justice to either of these projects and there was also a lot of other really great work on display as well, it's just that these are two projects which particularly stood out, specially with my papery angle on things!

Thank you to the course tutors who invited me, Roz Streeten and Maria Da Gandra.

www.csm.arts.ac.uk/2010-degree-shows

Hila Ben-Navat: hilulimb@gmail.com

Kristina Kostadinova: kristina.kostadinova@gmail.com

Posted by Justin Hobson 18.06.2010